Make Animal Tracks – Lesson Plans

You do not need to be planning a trip to a sandy beach to try out this fun activity. It can just as easily be done in a sandbox or at a playground that has sand. Follow along with Arianne’s tutorial and discover how to turn inexpensive flip-flops into fun animal track shoes.

Read through the Tutorial: How to Make Animal Track Shoes.

Animal track shoes are creative tools that allow children to imprint animal footprints as they walk, simulating the tracks of various creatures. These shoes can be crafted by attaching cut-out shapes of animal paws to the soles of flip-flops or similar footwear, enabling children to leave behind patterns resembling those of real animals.

Activities Utilizing Animal Track Shoes

Nature Walks and Tracking Exercises: Children can wear these shoes during outdoor excursions to create tracks in soft terrains like sand or mud. This activity encourages them to observe and compare their artificial tracks with real animal footprints, enhancing their tracking skills and attention to detail.

Storytelling and Imaginative Play: Incorporating animal track shoes into storytelling sessions allows children to act out narratives involving animals, fostering creativity and empathy as they embody different creatures.

Art Projects: Using the shoes to stamp tracks onto paper or fabric can be an engaging art activity, helping children explore patterns and develop fine motor skills.

Scientific Exploration: Educators can design experiments where children create tracks and analyze them, introducing basic scientific concepts such as observation, hypothesis formation, and experimentation.

What are the benefits of Animal Track Activities for Children

Enhanced Observation Skills: Tracking activities teach children to notice subtle details in their environment, sharpening their observational abilities.

Spatial Awareness: Following and creating tracks helps children understand spatial relationships and movement patterns, contributing to their physical development.
/

Empathy and Connection to Nature: Engaging with animal tracks fosters a sense of connection to wildlife and the environment, promoting empathy and ecological awareness.

Critical Thinking: Determining which animal made a particular track encourages analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Physical Activity: These activities involve walking, bending, and sometimes climbing, promoting physical health and coordination.

Next Plan Idea:

Play Idea: Kinetic Sand and Legos

Women’s history month is a great time to learn about women’s contributions to the sciences, though it’s great to do this any time of year. Women are historically underrepresented in STEM fields, and learning about female scientists and inventors of the past might just inspire some of today’s girls to learn more in these fields.

Kindergarten Worksheets and Games has a set of printable coloring pages with facts about female inventors and little cartoon people to color along with space for drawing their invention. There are 12 inventors included, such as Maria Beasley Cox, who invented the life raft, and Josephine Cochrane, who invented the automatic dishwasher.

123 Homeschool 4 Me has little printable books about female inventors, many of the same ones as in the coloring pages above, but with more detail than those pages have. Again there are 12 in this collection, which includes Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar.

I love the idea of having older kids do a little research project about a female scientist or inventor. Momgineer has an activity to help kids do just that, though hers isn’t specific to female inventors. This printable has kids make a little booklet with facts about the person they researched (you can make your own if you want since the outline of a person on the page has a beard). There’s also a scientist scavenger hunt in this resource that’s available from Teachers Pay Teachers.

If you’re looking for more female scientists and inventors for kids to learn about, A Mighty Girl is a great resource. Check out their posts about women inventors and female scientists to get you started.

This post from Journal Buddies talks about women in the automotive industry specifically, but it has good prompts you can use for talking about women in STEM more generally, such as who that they learned about inspired them or what challenges you think the women might have faced in male-dominated fields.

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply